Facebook is experimenting with a downvote button in certain markets. But before you get excited, it’s not the same thing as a dislike button. We’re still waiting for a thumbs-down react option, but in the meantime, there will be a new way to rank comments so that the “best” content appears first.
Follow the Arrows
In addition to the set of emoji reacts—like, love, haha, wow, sad, and angry—you’ll soon be able to hit an up or down arrow to show whether a comment was helpful, insightful, or relevant to the discussion.
This new feature mimics other platforms like Reddit or the commenting system Disqus, used by many sites around the web. After the hits Facebook’s reputation has taken recently, the move can be seen as part of an overall strategy to make the social media site a more appealing place to spend your time. By downvoting comments that are disrespectful, hateful, or off-topic, users have more control over the content that’s displayed.
Fostering Communication
The goal with the downvote option is ultimately to clean up the comments with less hate and fake news. “People have told us they would like to see better public discussions on Facebook, and want spaces where people with different opinions can have more constructive dialogue,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Our hope is that this feature will make it easier for us to create such spaces, by ranking the comments that readers believe deserve to rank highest, rather than the comments that get the strongest emotional reaction.”
Limited Trial Run
For now, the feature is only available in New Zealand and Australia. Assuming everything goes well there, the social media giant intends to extend the downvote feature to other territories. No word on when it will arrive in the US, but you can probably expect to see the upvote/downvote options sometime this year. As for how Facebook plans to deal with potential abuse of the system…well, we will have to wait and see.
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